Britney Spears knows that she needs psychological help, but is afraid to seek treatment because she fears she will lose her kids forever, a source close to the pop star tells PageSix.com exclusively.

The insider reveals that the troubled singer’s meltdown on Thursday night was caused in part by the deposition she was forced to give earlier in the day for her child custody case. Britney and her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, have been locked in a bitter battle over custody of their two kids, Sean Preston, 2, and Jayden James, 1, since they split in November 2006.

During the 15-minute deposition, “Britney realized when [Kevin's lawyer, Mark Vincent] Kaplan started firing off questions about her mothering skills that no matter what she said or did, she was going to lose her children, as every word she was saying could be taken out of context or used against her,” the source says.

After the deposition (which she’d arrived almost two hours late for), the 26-year-old returned home for a scheduled visit with her sons and the insider says that is when “something inside her snapped and made her realize that she could very well lose custody of her children, forever.” Sadly, after she admitted to Cedars-Sinai hospital in L.A. in the early hours of Friday morning on a 72-hour psych hold, she did lose custody of her kids, albeit temporarily.

The stress of the child custody battle has clearly taken its toll on Britney, whom sources tell us “has been properly diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder that is complex and isn’t just a bi-polar disorder.” She is under a doctor’s care, but managing her condition is a “very complex and complicated situation that is an ongoing dilemma for Britney to deal with.”

Multiple sources have told us that there have been ongoing efforts made to seek the proper inpatient psychiatric care for her, but that she has resisted, partly because of the seemingly endless custody battle. Our source tell us that Britney was fearful that if she were to seek help at this time, it would hurt her chances of getting the boys back because Kaplan would use that against her in front of Commissioner Gordon.

The future for Britney is very uncertain, as the battle for her boys has now taken a turn for the worse after the events of last week. We are told that “there is a plan to get Britney the help she needs, but its an ongoing battle to get her to admit that she needs the help.”

The unanswered question here is where are Britney’s friend and family? While her father, Jamie, and Sam Lufti were by her side during the hours she was in the psych ward at Cedars-Sinai, it is clear to anyone who’s followed her alarming downward spiral that Britney is a sad, lonely women who chooses to befriend money-hungry paparazzi because she doesn’t have a circle of friends who will love and protect her. An insider says this is part of the reason why she is always checking into hotels instead of living in the lap of luxury in her 8,800 square foot mansion in Beverly Hills. Our source tells us that “the house is just too big and lonely,” without the boys around. The house that was once filled with the “happy sounds of little boys,” is now eerily silent, and this is what leads the troubled singer to drive around aimlessly and check into hotels, rather than staying home.

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